Irish Memories

She hid it always, close against her breast, A golden vase, close sealed and strangely wrought, And set with gems, whose dim eyes, mystery fraught, Shot broken gleams, like secr...

Silver and blue the hills, and blue the infinite sky, And silver sweet the straying sound of bells Among the pines; their tangled music tells Where the brown cattle wander. From...

It was in June, 1888, that Mrs. Martin became the tenant of Ross House and that she and her daughters returned to Galway, sixteen years, to the very month, since they had left it.

My brother Robert’s life began with the epoch that has changed the face and the heart of Ireland. It ended untimely, in strange accord with the close of that epoch; the ship has...

While I have been writing this book the difficulty of deciding between the things that interested Martin and me, and those that might presumably interest other people, has been...

With Flurry’s Hounds, and you our guide, We learned to laugh until we cried; Dear Martin Ross, the coming years Find all our laughter lost in tears. --_Punch_, Jan. 19, 1916.

I have deeply considered the question as to how far and how deep I should go in the matter of my experiences as an Art student. Those brief but intense visits to Paris come back...

The journey from Drishane to Ross was first made by me in February, 1889. As the conventional crow flies, or as, on the map, the direct line is drawn, the distance is no more th...

Before I abandon these “Irish Cousin” years at Drishane, I should like to say something more of the old conditions there. I do not think I claim too much for my father and mothe...

With the death of my father the curtain fell for ever on the old life at Ross, the stage darkened, and the keening of the tenants as they followed his coffin was the last music...

“The Real Charlotte” can claim resemblance with Homer in one peculiarity at least, that of a plurality of birthplaces. She was first born at Ross, in November, 1889, and achieve...

We returned to Drishane in October, having by that time written and illustrated the third story of the series. Which was fortunate, as on the first of November, “November Day” a...

Throughout these very discursive annals I have tried to keep in remembrance a lesson that I learnt a few years ago from a very interesting book of Mr. Seton Thompson’s called, I...

I think that the final impulse towards the career of letters was given to us by that sorceress of whom mention has already been made. By her we were assured of much that we did,...

The Famine yielded like the ice of the Northern Seas; it ran like melted snows in the veins of Ireland for many years afterwards. Landlords who had escaped ruin at the time were...

For the remainder of the year ’94 the exigencies of family life kept Martin and me apart, she at Ross, or paying visits, I at home, doing the illustrations for our Danish tour,...

Taking the publication of “An Irish Cousin” as the beginning of our literary work, its next development was a series of short articles on Irish subjects that Martin wrote, singl...

The adverse opinion of her old and once-trusted comrade, Mrs. X., in the matter of “The Delegate” was not the only trial of the kind that Mrs. Martin had to face. I imagine that...

It is a commonplace, even amounting to a bromide, to speak of the breadth, the depth, and the length of the ties of Irish kinship. In Ireland it is not so much Love that hath us...

This benediction was bestowed upon Martin by a beggar-woman in Skibbereen, and I hope, and believe, it has been fulfilled. Wherever she was, if a thing amused her she had to lau...

Chief Justice Bushe died in 1843, and Maria Edgeworth in 1849, but Mrs. Bushe lived on till 1857, a delight and an inspiration to her children and grandchildren. To her, even mo...

There is, I imagine, some obscure connection between the Fairies and the Evil Eye. There was “an old Cronachaun of a fellow,” who lived in the parish of Myross, who was said to...

There is a portrait of Mrs. Bushe that is now in the possession of one of her many great-grandchildren, Sir Egerton Coghill. It is a small picture, in pastel, very delightful in...

“It was on a Sunday, the eleventh day of a lovely June,” her sister, Mrs. Edward Hewson, has written, “that Violet entered the family. A time of roses, when Ross was at its best...

I once read a fragment, by John Davidson, that appeared some years ago in the _Outlook_. I grieve that I have lost the copy and do not remember its date. It was called, if I am...

As had been the case with “The Real Charlotte,” so were we also in Paris when “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.”--to give the book its full and cumbrous title--was published by...

I have spoken of that first cousinhood of seventy, the grandchildren of the Chief Justice, of whom my mother and Martin’s were not the least notable members. I want to say somet...

In February, 1895, I met Martin in London, and found her in considerable feather, consequent on her reviving visit to St. Andrews, and on that gorgeous review in which we had be...

In our parts of Ireland we do not for a moment pretend to be too civilised for superstition. When Cromwell offered the alternative of “Hell or Connaught,” with, no doubt, the co...

I have already commented on the social importance, and value, of the feuds of a century ago. Fights were made, like the wall-papers, the carpets, the furniture, to last. Friends...

He shall bring back our year to us that Time cannot destroy. Time cannot slaughter it if Memory says no. It is reprieved, though banished. We shall often see it, though a little...

A few years ago Martin wrote an account of her eldest brother, Robert, known and loved by a very wide circle outside his own family as “Ballyhooley.” He died in September, 1905,...